Come see Jim Bankoff at PandoMonthly New York (and leave with a job at Vox?)

I am a little nervous about our first PandoMonthly New York of 2014. It's with Vox's CEO Jim Bankoff. He has become the media's answer to a Hoover vacuum of late, sucking up sites and talent, no matter the sector.

He already gobbled up my board member Lockhart Steele's company Curbed and is gutting the Washington Post. Send your talent to this PandoMonthly with extreme caution. Bankoff's Jedi acqui-hire trick may be so powerful that I'm half afraid I may end up selling Pando on stage a la TechCrunch and AOL. (Naaaahhhh....)

Bankoff has not shoved his personal brand front and center when it comes to Vox's empire, a brand that now includes SB Nation, The Verge, Polygon, Curbed, and more. But he has shoved plenty of capital at them. He's raised $61 million to date -- a lot given the content space was mostly about bootstrapping seven years ago. It's a lot even for those who have sought outside funding: Pando, for instance, has raised less than $5 million. You can see it in the product. CES was so overrun by Verge busses and staff that it should have been renamed "CES BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE VERGE!" Sometimes when I look at The Verge's gorgeous and innovative design I actually feel like dollars are hitting me in the face.

If you believe -- like I do -- that the next major 100-year media brands are getting built right now, Vox has to be a company to watch for it's sheer size, scope, and ambition alone.

One of the things I love most about PandoMonthly is that it's an oral history of the Web and innovation that doesn't exist anywhere else -- now with more than 100 hours of footage. In the Valley, a lot of the content has been from billionaires who've already made and are looking backwards. In New York, we are chronicling this pivotal moment in media as it's happening via past interviews with Jonah Peretti, Chris Hughes, and Henry Blodget, and this year's sit-downs with Bankoff and Vice's Shane Smith.

As an added bonus, New York attendees will get the first look at our new PandoQuarterly print magazine at the event, and whiskey and BBQ thanks to our partners in Southland, LaunchTN. Come on out!